Sunday, August 17, 2014

Disney's Maleficent: Adding complexity, with caution

One of the
most common complaints leveled against Disney films has always been the lack of
complexity. Their detractors generally emphasize that the Disney universe seem
to adhere to a rigid Good/Evil dichotomy, with little or no room for nuanced,
multi-faceted characters. Disney's latest effort Maleficent,
a live-action reinterpretation with gothic undertones of the 1959 iconic
animated feature film Sleeping Beauty, appears like a
curious attempt to break with tradition and respond to those allegations with a
shining counterexample.

Remaining
substantially faithful to the well-known original version – the wicked fairy
Maleficent puts on princess Aurora a deadly spell that only true love can break – scriptwriter Linda Woolverton (Beauty and The Beast, The Lion King) programmatically subverts every convention we
traditionally associate with Disney pictures. The first recognizable result of
this kind of reversal process is, as the film's title suggests, that the
villain plays the lead role, while the original protagonist Princess Aurora is
a somewhat secondary character. The opening shot shows the Disney logo fading
into an aerial view of the king's castle, then the camera soon leaves the
kingdom's territory and heads for the Moors, the neighboring forest realm where
Maleficent lives. This is not only a major shift in point of view, but the
first of many hints that what we are watching is an "untold",
"unofficial" story unfolding on the margins of tradition.

The first
quarter or so of the movie provides an explanation to a question that wasn't
even touched in the 1959 film, and didn't need to be: why does Maleficent feel
such a visceral hate for King Stefan, to the point that she curses his daughter
to die? While originally the only motivation for Maleficent's resentment was
basically that they drew her that way, in the revised version she is no more
the incarnation of Pure Evil, but she has a very good reason to be enraged – if
you have seen the film, a scene involving a pair of wings will immediately spring
to your mind.

(Spoilers
ahead!)

But if
Maleficent is not your typical fairy tale villain, the heroes in this story display
some peculiarities too. Prince Stefan undergoes a transformation from a lovable
boy who would do anything to protect his sweetheart, to an abusive, power-hungry
king-to-be. On the other end of the spectrum we find young Prince Philip, perfectly
embodied by teenage idol Brenton Thwaites, who seems destined to wake Aurora
from her dead-like sleep but is condemned instead to the worst fate imaginable for
a Prince Charming: impotence. Which brings us to the plot's turning point and
main departure from the original cartoon: Aurora comes to life again thanks to
a woman's kiss, a kiss of which the least that can be said is that it's ambiguous.

Indeed I'm not alone in recognizing in the chemistry between Maleficent and Princess Aurora a
possible allusion to an implied romance. Many clues actually seem to point in
this direction. First of all, there is no single male character who could
legitimately play the part of the classic fairy tale prince. In fact, as we
have seen, the two main male characters King Stefan and Prince Philip are
respectively wicked and weak, while Maleficent's crow servant Diaval, who
instead has a positive connotation and displays great charm, is nonetheless
portrayed as an angelic, sexless creature. Moreover, the only sexual intercourse hinted at in the film is a rape,
and the event is so traumatic that it doesn't only cause Maleficent to distance
herself forever from her former lover, but also leads her to reject completely
the human kingdom with all its values.

Ambiguity
becomes more palpable later in the film. While three incompetent little pixies
take care of Aurora's education and safety in a cabin in the woods, removed
from the danger of enchanted spinning wheels, Maleficent unexpectedly develops
a strong bond with the young princess, to the point that she earns from her the
title of godmother. But what at first might appear simply as a motherly feeling
gradually takes the shape of something else once Aurora enters adolescence, and
just before reaching 16 years of age, which coincides with both maturity and
the curse's fulfillment, Aurora expresses the desire to move to the Moors to
live with Maleficent. The importance of this decision is underscored by the
fact that at this point an encounter between Aurora and Prince Philip has
already taken place, without her showing any interest in him that could go
beyond a tender friendship.

These could
be easily dismissed as mere conjectures, if the pivotal kiss scene didn't
dispel most of the perplexities. Not only the classical prince's kiss is
replaced by a (chaste) woman's kiss, but what is more important, following the
True Love's kiss Woolverton refuses to insert any scene that could reassure us
in our heteronormative expectations. At the end, Aurora is crowned queen of the
human and fairy kingdoms, with the unification of the two realms paralleling
the bond that has developed between Maleficent and Aurora, while Prince Philip,
although present to the celebration, still remains a cardboard figure of
marginal importance.

If we would
stop here, we could conclude that Maleficent is a game
changer for Disney. To a certain extent it certainly is, although it resembles
less a shift in the Disneyan paradigm and more a velvet revolution. In fact, however
surprised we might be by seeing the norms of Disney storytelling turned
upside-down, the whole operation can be viewed as part of a strategy as well.
After all, Disney has always made a special effort to be in step with the times
without losing touch with tradition during all its history. Actually, this is
not a prerogative of the Walt Disney Studios. The so-called Classical Hollywood
Cinema has often relied upon a combination of well-established conventions and
bold innovations to produce original works without shocking the audience. On
closer inspection, the reason why Maleficent stands out from
the average Disney feature resides not much in the introduction of a homosexual
subtext, but rather in the way this novelty is disguised behind a more tepidly
innovative change. An
omniscient voiceover narrator, who is eventually revealed to be "the one
they called the Sleeping Beauty", provides at some points a commentary on
the events, underlining above all Maleficent's change of heart and the
unexpected turns that the story takes. This commentary has the function to
prevent us from going too far with interpretations, insisting on the supposedly
audacious stylistic deviances on display while under the surface the film deals
undisturbedly with trickier issues.

That being
said, giving credence to fanciful conspiracy theories claiming that Disney is
secretly advancing a "gay agenda" would be a mistake. In my opinion, what Disney is trying to do with
Maleficent is just strengthen its ties of complicity with
spectators by showing openness towards a thorny subject. As welcome as this
news is, though, I doubt we really need to be taught by Disney that homosexual
love can be considered "true love". Actually, accepting to portray a
gay relationship in the most cautious way possible seems less an act of courage
than a marketing ploy these days – at least in an era where the US President is
a proud supporter of same-sex marriages, and even the Pope of the Catholic Church has shown open-mindedness on the subject. Neither would
Disney be the first company to adopt this type of strategy. In 1994 IKEA
launched the first-ever gay-themed advertising
campaign, a then-pioneering
example in a now more widespread marketing strategy.
The episode of the Barilla CEO who in September 2013 announced that the brand would not
feature gay families in ads, immediately followed by a wave of comparative commercials by other Italian food companies openly mocking Barilla's narrow-mindedness,
represents an important warning for those companies who fail to recognize
ongoing social changes.

For these
reasons, Maleficent can be considered as Disney's latest
effort to adapt to an ever-changing context, the innovations in narrative don't
raising it from being mostly the product of a conservative mind. For its timid
treatment of homosexuality and the prudence with which it introduces a
potentially controversial theme, it perfectly incarnates the famous motto of
Prince Salina in Tomasi Di Lampedusa's novel The Leopard:
"Everything needs to change, so everything can stay the same".

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"Every encounter between a man and a woman starts off as if it were the first such meeting on earth. As if there haven't already been billions of such encounters since the time of Adam and Eve. You see, experience in love is nontransferable. This is a great misfortune. And a great piece of luck."